Brian Greene (the physicist, not me) says there is no afterlife. Considering he’s always talking about invisible dimensions to which we have no sensory access, I find that to be an interesting assertion.

Have you ever wanted to flood the world? Ever wondered what it woudl look like if the sea level rose 15 meters? Well here is an interactive map of sea level rise! WOW!

Oh, and the real reason for the war in Libya? Well, just saving poor rebels from a maniacal dictator is hardly enough. We haven’t started bombing Yemen or Bahrain, after all. A real war requires a slightly more adequate adversary. Why? Because what good wars really do is advertise weapons systems.

National Geographic has some amazing images (go to their website and scroll through them to see) of HOT nuclear waste being transported in Europe. Those little atoms can do some interesting things… I’ve always found the idea of innately warm inorganic material to be rather disturbing.

And not to be left out, we have radioactive stuff right here in California, of course! Radioactive beagle residue at UC Davis. I used to know a radiation officer who had been keeping track of the radioactive plume spreading in the groundwater from these experiments.

Such are the hazards of modern life, I suppose. We gain power and we mess up before we figure out how to use it properly. Personally, I think we need to try a little harder not to make our planet poisonous to advanced life forms. Cockroaches can take a lot of radiation. Humans not so much.

UPDATE

Just found this fascinating movie about radioactive storage in Finland. Storage for 100,000 years. Something for future generations to remember us by…

At 3:30 Tuesday morning, police shot and killed a mountain lion in the “Gourmet Ghetto” area of Berkeley (just a few blocks from Chez Panisse and a number of other trendy eateries). They had been tracking the cat through residential backyards for about an hour after someone reported seeing it in a vacant lot. They killed her after deciding that she posed a significant threat to public safety. At 3 a.m.? When she was clearly trying to evade human beings?

My first thought was one that many other readers had: why couldn’t authorities simply tranquilize and relocate her? They had been tracking her for an hour while she was in command of her senses. Surely they could have tracked her another 10-15 minutes while a drug kicked in and debilitated her? But that was never even a consideration:

Berkeley police don’t carry tranquillizer (sic) darts, and they aren’t standard issue for wardens either, (Fish and Game Warden Patrick) Foy said. “We don’t carry tranquillizers (sic) drugs in our patrol trucks,” he said. “There are some instances where you have time and you can get the tranquillizers (sic), but that’s not at three in the morning.” Continue reading